City Comforts, the blog

To talk or not to talk

This post precipitated comments about whether how to treat Hamas and whether we should "talk" to it.

People who are opposed to talking with Hamas miss several things:

1. "Talking" does not mean "negotiating." It means talking. In fact part of talking might be telling someone that they are talking nonsense, to put it politely.
2. "Talking" to someone does not suggest that one thinks the other person is reasonable much less "nice." Police talk with vicious criminals all the time because sometime the criminals themselves reveal the clus to solving a crime. Should we tell cops not to talk to bad guys because it "recognizes" them?
3. One talks to someone for one's own benefit — to gain information. For instance, the USA would have been better off had we been talking to Saddam Hussein's Iraq (at high and low levels) as we might have learned that it had no WMDs. It gives an opportunity to size up one's opponent and find the weak points.

Remember what the Godfather said: "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."

The argument against talking with enemies is that  raises their status and legitimizes them? Of course it does. It is literal "recognition" and "acknowledgment." No one who suggests communication with Hamas could deny that. But so what? In fact Hamas is a player and one of the main impediments to any sort of peaceful solution. Not communicating Hamas will not make Hamas go away. But it does put Hamas on the defensive because if all they sell is "Kill Jews" and "Destroy Israel" then their perfidy is obvious for all to see and they eventually marginalize themselves as irrelevant.

Likewise I am always puzzled why both sides in this dispute make so much — one way or another — about Israel's origins. Its enemies claim it is a moral weakness that Israel was born in war, overlooking the fact that every nation was baptized (so to speak) in blood. Name one which hasn't except maybe Iceland. And the Palestinians — and I don't mean to be cavalier — are simply the losers of a war. Why should one expect them to be treated by Israel as other than enemies? There is a war going on. They were and still are (by-and-large) enemies. Now is that an unconditioned defense of Israeli policies? Of course not; Israel seems to me to be in competition with the Arabs for doing stupid things. But what it does say is that the moral posturing (and probably by many on both sides) is pretty silly.

My Jeddah talk on megaprojects

A while ago I wrote that I'd post the talk I prepared for the 2008 Jeddah Economic Forum. So here it is as a PDF: Why & How to civilize the mega-project. It's a good talk but only if you are interested in the subject.

Now that I know more of the development taking place in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and have even seen some of it, I believe that the suggestions in the talk are all the more on point. Probably the key one — and one of the most difficult to implement because of the close relationship everywhere in the world between local politicians and large developers — is as Massengale in the immediately prior post suggests: break-up the megaproject site into streets and blocks and sell off lots and not to many to one entity. Will that limit the number of huge Burj Dubai (>160 stories) scale projects? Uh, yes. It will even limit the number or puny 50-story skyscrapers for the simple reason is that, practically speaking, the taller the building the large the footprint it needs. So breaking up ownerships on a block is a practical way to limit the scale of buildings. Is such a policy likely to be adopted in many parts of the world? Probably not.

The good news is that there are other ways to civilize the megaproject, though I don't think any are as elegant as the platting process. Read the talk if you want more.

Bravo!

The Best Way To Develop Atlantic Yards & Hudson Yards

The Atlantic Yards and Hudson Yards sites are being developed in the wrong way: instead of selling them to mega-developers like Forest City Ratner and Tishman Speyer (who are both having trouble coming up with the cash), we should develop them the way New York was traditionally developed. That means platting the streets and blocks, and selling lots on those blocks. No eminent domain would be involved.

An unpleasant leading indicator

Architects' Billings Plummet to All-Time Low ("all time low" for the last 12 years, anyway)

The Architectural Billings Index (ABI), a key measure of the market for architectural services compiled by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), opened the year with a three-month skid, ending the first quarter at the lowest point in its 12-year history.

Do the math — oil & neighborhood food shopping

This post on Impact of high oil on the spatial economy prompted some interesting comments and got me thinking with a calculator.

The issue is whether there is a plausible scenario for neighborhood food shopping i.e. within 3-4 blocks. Now let's put aside that a vast number of people live where there are no neighborhoods in a traditional sense and the only stores which sell food are either tiny -— a Seven-Eleven — or huge — a big box such as Safeway, Walmart, Krogers etc etc. So they have no current choice to go anywhere but a big box.

So let's look at one very narrow factor of food prices — the cost of distribution and of moving food long distances across the USA by truck.

My assumptions (and bear in mind that these are "order of magnitude" reckonings.) :
• the payload of  a semi-trailer is something like 40,000 pounds.
• shipping distance is 1500 miles.
• projected cost of diesel fuel is $8.00/gallon
• semi-trailers get somewhere around 6 mpg (though I found references to the possibility of 10 mpg, which would of course change a lot of these calcs, but we'll stick with 6mpg for now.)

The semi will need 250 of gallons of diesel to go 1500 miles.

At $4.00 gallon that's $1000.
At $8.00 gallon that's $2000.

Scary stuff. But let's do the numbers before we panic.

We are looking at shipping one semi-trailer load of 40,000 pounds, So the increase in cost  per shipment (also assuming there is a backhaul) is $1000 of additional fuel cost divided by 40,000 pounds of food, or about 2.5 cents per pound of food. With food costing at least (for even cornflakes) at least $2/pound, that 2.5 cents per pound doesn't look like a lot.

Of course every bit hurts and we haven't considered the cost of oil buried in food from farm equipment, fertilizers etc etc. But remember, my analysis is aimed at one narrow question: shopping patterns spatially.

Where do I err?

Now don't misunderstand. I am not saying that these dramatic increases in fuel prices will not precipitate enormous changes: they will and some will be quite disturbing and challenging. But let's make sure we put things in correct  proportion. Nor am I saying that we shouldn't have different national and local policies which would lead to different spatial patterns. My exploration is simply to see if the kind of end-of-the-world talk coming from folks like Jim Kunstler make much sense.

•••

Furthermore, an awful lot of food — whether it is bought in a big-box or neighborhood boutique — must for reasons of climate come from far away. They don't grow wheat near New York City and we don't grow rice near  Seattle. So it makes no difference whether the food is going to one huge store or dozens of small ones because the food comes from far-away in any case.

Then to those who suggest that we eat local, that's fine. I have no problem with such a philosophy (though I don't particularly share it) and when the price of tomatoes from the environs of  Seattle is as cheap as those from Mexico, we'll all switch.

 

Adaptive reuse of parking structures

This post here asked an interesting question about a proposed parking structure:

“How smart a use of land and resources will those 2300 parking stalls seem in 20 years?”

My immediate response was that is depends on whether the garage is designed for easy adaptation to another use. Sure the parking stalls might (arguably) not be needed but a sturdy structure will still exist.  I expected the issue to be a cakewalk.

So I started thinking about it and wondered what "easy adaptation" actually means for a parking structure? What are the factors? I don't know for sure of course and this is really a question for architects and structural engineers. To the layperson most parking garages seem quite stoutly-built, very often of concrete, so it would seem plausible that they should be able to handle a wide range of uses. In addition, the (typical) concrete floors should provide those critically-important "fire separations" required between different uses.

And some other factors came to mind:

1. "Adequate" headroom for a range of typical uses.
2. Minimum ramps and maximum level floor plates as you don't want to have to contend with a Guggenheim Museum ramp.
3. "Adequate" floor loads as believe it or not cars are not that heavy.

Factor one — decent headroom — might be an issue as most garages are built with something like minimum head-room of  7 feet to the bottom of a beam and then maybe up to 8.5 feet to the bottom of the floor above. No one expects them to be anything but a parking garage. Concern for economy also suggests minimum height. So not good for adaptive reuse. But hey! what about storage? You don't need (or  want) high ceilings for mini-storage. Let's see.

How about factor two, level floor plates? Unfortunately a lot of the nicest (for a driver) parking garages are a series of ramps with very little level area and that often at the hairpin turns. Maybe not too promising even for storage.

Well surely we are OK with factor three — strong floors? Alas, it seems not. I just did a quick check and through the magic of Google came up with another piece of bad news: Passenger Vehicle Parking Garage Live Loads. It appears that parking garages can be designed to the same or lower "live load" than apartments or single-family houses: 40 - 50 ponds per square foot. Isn't that amazing? But it make some sense. A car weighs (say) 3000 pounds and takes up a space of (minimum) 9' by 18' or 162 square feet (sf). Simple math gives you 3000 pounds over 162 sf or 18.5 pounds per square foot! Pretty amazing, huh? There are 4 point loads per car where the wheels touch the parking deck and the code does make some special provision for them.

Bottom line: it looks bad and that adaptive reuse of parking structures as they are built today may have issues so substantial as to make it impractical. The typical contemporary parking garage is not in fact a "warehouse for cars" which can be converted easily to glamorous lofts for young moderns.

Of course, again, I am no architect or engineer so I may have gotten this analysis all wrong and will be happy to be corrected.

Impact of high oil on the spatial economy

DanB writes here:

"Your comparison regarding trips to Renton makes sense only if you assume that it is necessary for people to shop at big box stores. It is quite possible that the big box model will not survive in the world of peak oil and GHG gas emissions regulation"

I am not quite sure I follow Dan about the big box stores. I think that many people are overstating the impact of higher oil prices on the spatial economy.

Here's an example. Even assuming gas at $6/gallon, I don't see how a mom-and-pop store can compete with big box stores for a host of consumer goods such as appliances, electronics, books etc.

Think about it from the pov of a consumer. Let's say I live 7.5 miles from a Costco. That's 15 miles round trip. In my gas-guzzling 15 mpg car at $3/gallon it costs me $3 to get there last year. Two years from now $6/gallon it will cost me an additional $3. That's trivial If I am expecting to spend greater than $3-4 hundred for a big ticket item like an appliance or new TV or a month's worth of food, especially when I can save many times that $3 and get a far wider choice at the big-box. Plus neighborhood appliance and electronic stores simply no longer exist; and the idea of re-establishing them seems unlikely. As a consumer (and maybe even an environmentalist) it is well-worth the $3 to have a wide choice so immediately available in one location. It saves time, effort and gas as I don't have to look further at five small shops to get the same choice I get at one large one. Do you think that such efficient choice may be one of the reasons for the overwhelming success of the big box in the first place? Maybe?

(In fact, interestingly enough, I live within 7 miles from 3 Costcos and with 10 miles from 3 more. And I assume that I am not unusual.)

The economic logic of the big-box is powerful and eliminating it does not strike me as realistic. I believe that our prime choice is to civilize the big-box, make it use its space more efficiently and I think that is quite doable.

Btw, none of this is to say that high oil will not have enormous ramifications but I think that the impacts on the spatial organization of cities is sometimes overstated.

Krugman calls it correctly

Sick transit and all that

My comment:

We may well have a massive revival of mass transit but more dramatic and a whole lot quicker will be massive shift to fuel- efficient cars, gas-powered or whatever.

Several factors:

1. Reverse dispersal option not realistic in less than 30-40 years. We have a massive public and private fixed-investment in dispersed real estate. In order to preserve that investment and the way of life it represents, many individuals will decide to substitute (as the market says they should) more efficient cars — and I mean 30-40 mpg or more — rather than selling their suburban house and moving closer to the center.

2. Transit systems can't be built quickly enough. The regions which are most in need of some sort of mass transit can either not afford it because their densities are too low (sunbelt) or are politically unable make the decisions required to create new transit systems (e.g. Seattle.) Into that decision-making vacuum will flow the smaller car.

I suspect we could dramatically increase average fleet mileage far, far quicker and with less disruption than we can build mass transit (even bus-based) systems.

That doesn't mean that we shouldn't invest heavily in mass transit. I am only suggesting that the far easier and quicker adjustment will be done by individuals and some types of businesses via the smaller vehicle.

Do the obvious

Parking Space as Living Space?

Yes.

Here's an example of the sort of positive impacts of high oil prices.

Could this be? Washington and Oregon as 'battleground' states?

That's what this Electoral Map from the NYT says. But the Democrat's Presidential nominee has won both states in the last four elections — 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004. Why should 2008 be any different?

I don't understand why they assume Americans know about megaprojects

From Suburban Office Parks to Korean Mega-Project

...the Gale Company... principal developer of New Songdo City, a mixed-use development on reclaimed land that is part of the city of Inchon in South Korea...10-year, $20 billion project is planned to include 40 million square feet of office space, 30 million square feet of residential space, 10 million of retail space, 5 million of hotel space and 10 million of public space...first new city in the country in hundreds of years, developers say...''We did not plan to do this,'' he said. ''We got an invitation from Korea.'' ...It is no accident that Korean officials chose a New York-area developer and a New York architect to design and build Songdo, Mr. Gale said. With rising prosperity, many Koreans want to improve their lifestyles after working long hours, six days a week. ''We are not just talking bricks and sticks here,'' Mr. Gale said. ''We are doing software as well, designing in space for cultural, historic and art uses.''

Don't misunderstand me. The Gale Company is no doubt a competent and honest developer, as is their designer, Kohn Pedersen Fox. But do they have any experience in developing a new city from scratch? I would assume not. No one really does. And the Koreans are smart and capable with excellent engineers and contractors. So why do they come to the USA? Do they truly believe that Americans have some sort of special insights, skills and experience in building new cities? Heaven help them if they do. Here's a rendering from 2005. You can't really tell very much but my sense of it is not good becaue — like every other megaproject — they show it from way high-up and not from sidewalk level:

More links:

Korea's High-Tech Utopia, Where Everything Is Observed

A ubiquitous city is where all major information systems (residential, medical, business, governmental and the like) share data, and computers are built into the houses, streets and office buildings. New Songdo, located on a man-made island of nearly 1,500 acres off the Incheon coast about 40 miles from Seoul, is rising from the ground up as a U-city.

New Songdo City - Wikipedia

Gale International

Update:

Just saw this very recent video from CNN. Don't miss it. The project's chief designer says all the right things. Hope he is not just blowing smoke.

Life starts with parking

And here is an other example: Parkingspots.com — Easy monthly parking spot rentals!

Parkingspots.com is an online marketplace for people with parking and people seeking parking.  The site provides an online database of available parking throughout Canada and the United States.  Free to search (for prospective Renters), the site is designed as a listing service for parking spots (traditional and non-traditional).  The site includes easy navigation and search functions that utilize Google Maps as well as postal/zip codes and street address.

Even in parts of Seattle — Capitol Hill, the CBD, First Hill — I can see the need. Some people have a space they own but don't use because they don't have a car. Conversely, some people live in an older building without parking or they need a second space. So I can see the need.

I wonder if such a site has a natural synergy with services like Flexspace et al. I  suspect that one of the problems faced by Flexspace is finding parking spaces scattered throughout residential neighborhoods which are open to non-residents i.e. in terms of security.

Break-up superblock, provide space for micro-retail

DanB makes some good points about the proposed Goodwill at Dearborn Street Development. He's right that it looks like a superblock development, which is unfortunate and bad. But I wonder if we have to ban large-plate retail (e.f. Safeway, Circuit City etc). Why not simply require a big box to be "wrapped" with small retail (maybe 30' deep*) at the street-grade to give opportunity for small and micro retail?

*I blogged about the issue of depth here: How deep should a retail space be?

A new focus for this blog: megaprojects

You may have noticed that I have started to pay attention to real estate megaprojects and how to civilize them. (I won't be focusing on the even more numerous utility and transport megaprojects such as dams, power plants & grids, marine and air ports, highways, tunnels etc. etc.)

Here's why.

I had the opportunity recently to spend a few fascinating days in the Middle East. I was invited to give a talk at the Jeddah Economic Forum 2008 on the subject of "megaprojects." Never having thought very much about megaprojects the prospect took me slightly aback. (If you know City Comforts then you know that it is about anything but praying to large-scale.) But as I got into writing the talk (which I will post here soon) and then visiting the Middle East I realized several things which had never occurred to me.

1. There are an incredible number of real estate megaprojects in design or under construction across the globe, often in some relationship with a utility or transport megaproject. That's the big story.

2. We don't have many megaprojects, if any, in the USA (military operations aside) which is why I hadn't thought much about them. The Middle East and East Asia, mostly China, seem to have them in abundance. Let's put it another way. If we have megaprojects in the USA, then they have hyperprojects elsewhere. There is not one single proposal (much less under anything construction) for a brand new city in the USA. In the Middle East and China there are several hundred such projects (the most numerous in China, of course, but seemingly the most glamorous ones in the Arab world.)

3. These megaprojects are going to get built. I come from a 1960s tradition of "small is beautiful." And that may well be true. But mega has its political and econoomic charms. Many magaprojects, whether I particularly like them or not, are being built and will continue to be built for several interrelated reasons:

• Capital is available to build magaprojects — vast capital, on a scale unimaginable to most of us and is concentrated in the hands of a very few decision-makers. That's the basic reason: megaprojects per se are created by capital-push, not market-demand.

• These decision-makers are often or even usually political figures in their nations and they need to put that capital to work to keep their people content — which usually means jobs — and it is easier to do ten megaprojects than a thousand merely large ones. The leader who can keep people employed and well-fed remains on top of the greasy pole. That is known in Chicago and DC and it is known in Riyadh and Peking.
• Most of these men (and they are mostly men) are  decision-makers in nations in which there is a tradition, being diplomatic, of centralized power. There are no NIMBYs to slow dow the process because, well, there is no political process as we in the the USA or Western Europe know it. These projects in most cases are born in a top-down world with which Robert Moses would be familiar, the only American developer who ever worked close to the scale of what I believe is happening overseas.
• The politics of mega-projects are interesting. It's my surmise that — taking the Middle East as an example — there is a window of opportunity to build these huge projects of perhaps another 30-50 years. By mid-century or so — assuming we haven't destroyed ourselves — the populations in what are now top-down authoritarian regimes will have developed their own NIMBYism. For example, Saudi Arabia is building a new city which is suppose to have 1 million residents — and it is being built about 1.5 hours drive from Jeddah, the business capital of Saudi Arabia with its own population of 2 million. That couldn't happen in the USA. No way could you assemble the political will to establish a new city of a million people 90 or so miles from an existing city of that size. If nothing else, the business-people of the existing city would simply put up too much of a fuss and resist diversion of such massive capital investment to a piece of raw land; they'd want it for their city. Saudi Arabia does not appear to have such issues — yet. So there is a political window of opportunity to build brand new cities from scratch which will only last a few generations, with any luck.

•••

One question: is it megaproject? or mega-project?

Interesting irony.

Southern California has nice weaather.

....LA would be a great place to walk or ride a bike to work all year 'round. But it's our bad weather belt that has the walkable cities, and our sunny and temperate all the time region that barely has sidewalks.

Blame history i.e. America was settled from east to west.

By the same token you shouldn't "colorize" a house by Frank Lloyd Wright

I was thinking about Witold Rybczinski's point (here) on architects' claims to have "built" and therefore presumably to have some future "moral rights" to prevent changes by future owners and it struck me that maybe there is a parallel with colorization in movies:

The case against colorization is most often couched in moral terms. According to this reasoning, colorization violates the moral right of the film director to create a work of art that has a final, permanent form and that will not be subject to alteration years later by unauthorized parties.

I think there is a parallel. If there is some reason to prohibit or at least inhibit colorization of movies then why let a current owner change the color of a house by certified artist-architects? See earlier post about the general issue here.

Of course I think prohibitions against colorization are absurd if for no other reason than we can simultaneously have both original black & white and also colorized versions. plural. And it's inaccurate to assume the director alone as the sole intellectual force to create a film and thus to determine if colorization can be done. But if one believe that such "moral rights" laws are appropriate for films then why not buildings?

 

Cooler heads prevail in San Francisco

Paint chain store cleared to open.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors gave approval Tuesday for an ICI Paints chain store to open at the intersection of Cesar Chavez Street and South Van Ness Avenue. The paint store's application for a permit to open at that location, which owners sought after closing a store on Market Street, had been denied by the city's Planning Commission. The supervisors' vote overturned that decision.

But it is incredible that such a decision even gad to get to the Board of Supervisors In fact it's absurd from the facts as I know them that the matter had to even go to the Planning Commission.

An example of an easy transformation

Backing for a Behemoth in New York City. But it flies under the radar because it is only $1 billion on 14 acres with 3.3 million square feet. So why would I mention it here? Because of the fascinating and novel solution found by the architect to "[m]aking sure those lease revenues offset the project’s huge cost." The story continues:

If stores had simply been clustered at the ground floor of stand-alone towers, as they are in many developments, the site would have yielded just 250,000 square feet — about one-quarter the amount he ended up including.

The ingenious solution? (so the article seems to suggest):

...increase the project’s retail square footage by creating its distinctive full-block pedestal-style base.

(click to enlarge)

Putting snarky humor aside, what is significant here? They've transformed a horrible Corbusian isolated-towers plan to a basic urban layout reflecting the three rules which meets the street with ground-floor retail.

Obviously there are many other aspects of this project which demand attention. The project is roughly 25% retail. (Retail = 800,000 SF. Total project is 3.3 million with 1,100 apartments.) There is no way that 1,100 for-sale apartments can support 800,000 SF retail so the retail must perforce be relatively larger stores (maybe even big box?) to draw from other parts of Queens. So there is a question of compatibility of large-scale destination tenants with residential living.

And the driver was certainly not an attempt to make a better urban project but simply to make enough (or more) money for an adequate return to the developer. But the interesting point is how dramatically and simply a terrible project can be converted into what has the potential to become a good one.

•••

More on the project: Developer of $1B Sky View Parc condo is bullish on Flushing.

Bullish, eh? So what else is new?

Truly stunning paint photoshopjob

 

But is it for real? Or photoshopped? And where is it? I want to go.  

Via Where: Urbanffffinds

Update: Alas, more than a little disappointing, it's a photoshop job of Manarola:

Cinque Terre.

S.F. grows ever more weird

S.F. grows ever more hostile to chain stores.

ICI Paints operated a store on Market Street for 65 years but needed to relocate after its lease expired last year. The company wanted to move into the shuttered Hollywood Video, whose parent company had gone bankrupt and left longtime landlord Ken Allen without a tenant.

But as part of their review, planning commissioners concluded that the property could be used for something more beneficial to the community - possibly new housing and some non-chain stores, although no developer had proposed such an alternative. (italics added(

The Commission has over reached, certainly by measure of wisdom and perhaps by law. The neighbors seem to be split, according to the City's Planners, who in fact actually favored the lease. Yet the Commissioners thought they had greater wisdom.

I had no idea that San Francisco had such an authoritarian element. Gives me the creeps to even think about such a government though I could easily see Seattle doing the same.

•••

Via Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

Hard to know if it's serious

What's clear is that we need far more than more malls. From a 2005 article in the NYT:

The Mall That Would Save America

Robert Congel, a commercial real-estate developer who lives in upstate New York, has a plan to ''change the world.'' Convinced that it will ''produce more benefit for humanity than any one thing that private enterprise has ever done,'' he is raising $20 billion to make it happen...

What Congel has in mind is an outsize and extremely unusual mega-mall. Destiny U.S.A., the retail-and-entertainment complex he is building in upstate New York, aspires to be not only the biggest man-made structure on the planet but also the most environmentally friendly. Equal parts Disney World, Las Vegas, Bell Laboratories and Mall of America -- with a splash of Walden Pond -- the ''retail city'' will include the usual shops and restaurants as well as an extensive research facility for testing advanced technologies and a 200-acre recreational biosphere complete with springlike temperatures and an artificial river for kayaking.

Someone ought to mention to the architect that isolated goof-itecture amidst a huge parking lot doesn't spell sustainable:

But some reporters take it seriously:

Mega-mall in upstate New York could give birth to a clean-energy awakening

But it sure looks like it will fall-apart:

Destiny USA Breaks Ground in Syracuse.

Two Steps Forward: Destiny USA's High-Wire Act.

Yet another new city in Dubai

"twice the size of Hong Kong Island with housing for 1.5 million people."

We've all been witness to the exploding nature of development in Dubai, but one project is taking the scale of building to another level altogether. On the emirate's last remaining few kilometres of undeveloped coastline an entire city is rising from the ground.

At the moment, Dubai Waterfront is nothing more than endless miles of deserted beachfront dotted with a few lone cranes. But wait ten years and this patch of sand will be transformed into a living, breathing city twice the size of Hong Kong Island with housing for 1.5 million people.

There is some  preposterous about the ambition but then you go see it and they are actually doing it. What Americans may not understand is that there is a vast world — hundreds of millions of middle-class people — for whom Dubai is nearby, Moslem, relatively honest and even progressive by the standards of that part of the world. So yes, it's not such a bizarre idea that a city-sate with a native population of 250,000 — think Tacoma or Ica, Peru before its emergency — could build a city for another 1.5 million people. What I don't quite yet get is whether the expectation is that these new residents will be part-timer residents simply looking for a safe haven (though I can't quite see how the Gulf is all that safe in global terms) or will be full-time. If the latter, doesn't that present a long-term threat to the hegemony of native Dubaians, much more so the Emir?

 

Pretty accurate summary

The Viaduct Conspiracy

Local urban designer (sic) David Sucher, who has been relentlessly predicting a retrofit for years, recently reiterated his view here, but what caught my attention was his assertion that the government has been intentionally misleading the public — our local version of the Iraq War, as he put it.

Yup, that is more or less how I see it, though I'd prefer to phrase it this way: It's not that they lied to the public but simply that they didn't tell the whole truth and biased the public conversation. The parallels to the Iraq war are disturbing as our local compliant press merely repeated government assertions with no independent review.

With both situations you have an initial problem — gruesome dictator and weakened viaduct — and the government uses that real problem for much larger and unconnected ends. In fact arguments can be made that the ends sought were ok if not even noble (widespread democracy in the Middle East and a beautiful front door to Puget Sound). But nobility of ends is not enough. An astute and wise politician will lead the people with plain talk so that the decision is theirs and they will stick by it. In both cases we have a failed policy with a public that wants to withdraw, the worst possible conclusion.

What amazes me is how the same Seattleites who were so correctly skeptical of George Bush's Iraq plans were simultaneously so willing to believe anything that aste and local government told them about the Viaduct. I can't figure that one out except to explain it by residual party loyalty. (Local politics in Washington State is dominated by Democrats.)

As Glenn Greenwald puts it here:

One of the biggest mistakes we can make is to assume competence and benign intent on the part of political officials when deciding how much power to give them. We ought to assume the worst about them — about their abilities, integrity and motives — and only then, based on those suppositions, should we decide how much power, and what specific powers, we’re willing to vest in them.

Concerning Clinton and the gas tax

Seems like most of the elite (except those angling for a job in her administration) think that Clinton is wrong, wrong, wrong on the gas tax.

I had been sitting on the fence about the election. While I do favor Obama I wouldn't have been concerned at all if Clinton were to be elected.

I feel differently today. Either she is a fool or she is venal; and either way she should not be President.

To clarify: I think that Clinton is wrong on the merits; it's absurd on policy and economic impact grounds to lower that tax. But reasonable people can disagree about many things and so it is not bizarre that Clinton should have another perspective on the gas tax. But her anti-intellectual stance — forget those wonky economists! — shows a woman who will stoop as low as possible to get to the White House and appeal to the Rush Limbaugh crowd — I don't nothing and I am proud of it!

What a contrast! Really hard to imagine such a dramatic transition

"Huacachina: Ensconced in the center of hundreds of miles of Peruvian desert..."

Think of it in context of The Transect.

Via Pro Traveller

See also: Last gasp for the Lourdes of the Americas

Update:  And in fact that little oasis "ensconced in the center of hundreds of miles of Peruvian desert" is also part of the city of Ica, which before the terrible earthquake of 2007 had 200,000 residents. So much for truth in photography. And thank goodness for Google Earth